The present invention relates to point of sales systems for conducting retail transactions and, in particular, to a method and system for displaying and/or broadcasting promotional and informational messages to a customer during a retail transaction.
Point of sale (xe2x80x9cPOSxe2x80x9d) systems have been commonly implemented with proprietary cash register machines linked through a communications network to one or more backroom servers. Recent advances in computer hardware, manufacturing processes, operating systems, and software design methodologies have made possible new generations of POS systems based on personal computer (xe2x80x9cPCxe2x80x9d) technologies. Both traditional POS systems and new generation PC-based POS systems provide both valuable information collection services and basic facilitation of retail transactions. However, POS systems currently provide relatively minimal feedback to the customer, generally a sales receipt and possibly display representation of a sales transaction, as discussed above. In some currently available POS systems, various advertisements and consumer information may be printed on the sales receipt or displayed on a auxiliary monitor or LED display. However, these currently available POS systems lack the capability of complex scripted tailoring of promotional information or advertisements to a particular customer within the context of the current retail transaction. Instead, advertisements and information are printed or displayed identically to each customer, on a random basis, or on the basis of simple item code matching. It would be desirable, for example, for a retail merchant to designate, within the POS system, particular promotional information tailored to particular customers based on the specific details of a retail transaction and on previously collected and processed information, including the loyalty information discussed above. Thus, purchase of a particular item by a particular customer might trigger an evaluation based on multiple variables within the transaction that leads to a special message or advertisement, including, for example, a discount or bonus computed from the evaluation. The need has therefore been recognized by retail merchants for POS systems with real-time, context driven promotional capabilities.
The present invention provides an augmented POS system that includes capabilities for real-time displaying and broadcasting of commercial information within the context of a retail transaction. Each front-end POS system is augmented with an auxiliary display or combined display and audio broadcast device for presenting promotional information to a customer during the course of a retail transaction. The auxiliary display device displays and may broadcast output of a web browser. A software messenger component resides within the front-end POS system in order to accept events from a POS system that are recognized by the POS system during the retail transaction. The messenger component translates the events into generalized messages that are queued to a message queuing component. The generalized messages are dequeued from the message queuing component by a generating component that generates web pages. The generated web pages are made available to a web server that provides web pages to the web browser for display on the auxiliary display device included in the front-end POS system. The augmented POS system can thus, in real-time, display web pages via the web browser generated in response to events that occur during the retail transaction. The net result is the real-time display to a customer of specific information tailored to that customer in the context of the retail transaction.